It's amusing to me how much it seems like the EU has a monkeys paw when it comes to tech regulation. There will be regret in 10 years as the US economy continues to grow and the EU shrinks.
How would we regret not letting US tech giants misuse our private data? How would letting them do that improve our economy?
Innovations and technology means a lot more than targeted ad-based spy-ware where the US is king and the EU is not even competing.
We should be competing who gets to provide a better standard of living for it's citizens not who's country's corporations Fe to exploit everyone to enrich a select few.
Also, let me get back from my year long paid parental leave, to tell you why having the strongest economy is not the most important thing in life.
From my experience, the experience of the US and EU companies is dramatically different. EU companies are at a dramatic disadvantage when it comes to promoting their products. It's much harder to track what's working and what's not, and more than that, there's a huge state of uncertainty. Dev teams don't know, for instance, whether this pixel or that server to server integration might get them in trouble for sure, so it just delays everything. So EU tech start-ups tend to languish in obscurity to a far greater degree, which means less of a feedback loop to improve the product, which overall means less tech wins in europe.
Start-ups follow a power law where most fail, but 5% succeed. This means you need a lot of shots on goal. When every shot on goal takes 3x the effort and cost...
It's not just tech privacy regulations by any means, but all of this together means that the gap between the US and EU continues to accelerate. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bbotjc/eu_vs_us_gdp...
And no, I think the "privacy" gains are basically meaningless and not worth the trade-off. And I would bet $100 any time that by 2030 that gap will continue to grow at the same rate.
I've also worked at startups both side of the Atlantic and I slept a lot better following EU regs, without the dirty feeling of having written scripts to creep on vulnerable people for the benefit of the company that was increasing their cost of living and treating them like statistical cattle.
It's not just privacy regulations hurting EU, those are easier to defend, it's the general deep rooted nature which makes that the automatic solution to every single problem without regard for the bigger picture. And those policies are always a one way street whether it benefited every one or not in retrospect.
What's the end goal? A perfectly regulated, moral economy that never grows and relies on immigrants to stabilize GDP numbers?
If these new regs also came at the same pace as reforms for previous ones that actively hurt these countries it'd be way easier to agree with as a general rule. Instead it's just another one thrown on the pile and the only new jobs are for administrators to enforce them.
It's also often of questionable value. Attacking cookie banners on HN was taboo for years but while they allegedly helped protect our privacy, targeted advertising immediately adapted - and yet in 2023 - every user continues to be burdened with the casino of modal boxes (they are never the same place or colours or labels) on every website (not just EU users), hoping they get one with a clear "reject all" button so it goes away the fastest, rarely because they care about the implications.
The GDPR says refusing non essential cookies should be as easy as accepting them.
Enforcement is happening for cases like this, but it is very slow....
Gaining escape velocity is just not possible in the EU where every member state still has full legal sovereignty, a different language, different governing and business laws, different governing body, different economy, sometimes different currency, different legal framework, different military and different consumer habits. The EU has unified some items like the currency for most members and some common laws, but still too few compared to the US which is a full-on country, not a membership of sovereign nations.
Also, while the US has undoubtably won the tech war financially speaking, due to it being unscrupulous at any level including privacy and justifying it to itself as "well China does it anyway so we should do it too otherwise we loose", but if you were to ask the average American on the street, and especially those queuing at the blood-bank to donate blood the second time this month to afford to pay bills, what would they prefer to have, either Europe's social benefits or the US winning the tech superiority and having the most tech billionaires, I think the answer would be clear and not the one you'd like to hear.
Say you want to target HR decision makers using Facebook ads. The most efficient and cutting edge way (that we do in the USA) is make a broad, master audience to target, and use "conversion events" (something that happens on your website that correlations to revenue later, like a qualified lead coming) to train the Meta algorithm to find more of them.
In Europe you used to be able do this across the entire EU, the Meta would target efficiently and could automatically use different language ads. Because FB's targeting algorithm is such a powerful AI, it could find qualified leads.
Now, many EU companies feel they can't or shouldn't use the tags or server to server integrations needed to power conversion events. Which means they have to do manual campaigns by country which is much less efficient.
This is just one solid example of many I've run into.
But such limitations are not all due to GDPR, and EU's economy is not stagnating just because you can't target all EU citizens with fakebook ads.
I am very skeptical that the issue is about Europe's linguistic, cultural or economic diversity. We are debating whether the regulations can have an economic impact and it's clear they do. Some modern AI tools are getting a late release in Europe because of regulation, some major apps like Threads are not even released here.
And for what? Some of our governments are still part of mass surveillance initiatives. Spying apps like TikTok and Facebook are able to hoover up data because people simply want to give it to them. I just don't see this future where Europeans have data privacy, I see a future where regulatory efforts are sparse, selective and harmful.
Sure, but how much of EU's economy is negatively impacted by Threads not launching here earlier?
And regarding AI tools, I too want them regulated in the sense that they must prove the models are trained exclusively on non-copyrighted material, or material they own the license for.
Sorry, I don't want to live an a wild-west where unscrupulous trillion dollar mega-corporations can just train their models on content without the owners' permission, and us citizens should just back off and support that blatant IP theft, because otherwise that poor trillion dollar corporation will not dominate the world and loose the AI wars.
Yeah and then maybe die early of cancer because you don’t even have resources for medical treatment. (Cancer mortality is considerably higher in Europe than the US due to less sophisticated treatment/medical care)
Meanwhile I could take a year of parental leave just by quitting and using my excess savings from my higher wage. The kicker? Afterwards I could find a new full time non-contractor job, something notoriously difficult in Europe due to your at will labor laws.
You need resources to pay for social amenities as the collapse of the NHS is rapidly showing.
Let's be serious now, not even the biggest ad industry proponents really believe that line.
If you want to talk about destroying the world, think about how much comparative press coverage and regulation tech is getting right now compared to big oil/gas (still subsidized heavily), big ag, etc. - things that are actually destroying the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93European_Union_...
All the tech companies that have buoyed the USA economy are basically a balance of trade issue for the EU, with all the money spent double Irish departing the EU and making its way to the USA.
Seriously, why would anyone in their right mind ever invest in tech creation in Europe? That’s right - they don’t. And it makes Europe poorer and less dynamic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/mnk1gp/eu_euro_area...